Family members of a South Florida military veteran jailed in Mexico are stepping up pressure to free their son so he won't spend Christmas behind foreign bars.

Jon Hammar, 27, hasn't been seen since August, when he and a friend set out in a Winnebago on a road trip headed for Costa Rica with plans on surfing.

Days after he drove off, his parents learned the former Marine landed in a Mexican jail, charged with carrying an illegal weapon.

"I ask you to continue to pray for him, we got a call from his last night, he's just in a really tough situation because it's public in Mexico at this point so we're praying you'll pray for his protection and his quick release," his mother, Olivia Hammar, said a news conference Thursday.

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The Hammar family was joined by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and other politicians who are calling on federal agencies to intervene and help free Hammar, who once worked security details for Afghanistan's president.

Imagine if this was an illegal alien in one of our jails after killing an American mother and her two American children while he was driving drunk. The “immigrant advocates” would be raising holy hell that the mean old Americans have their boy locked up and are not treating him like a king.

8
posted on 12/13/2012 4:23:11 PM PST
by FlingWingFlyer
(I feel sad for my once great country. We deserve everything that is about to happen to us.)

The local news reported that he claims to have checked with officials on both sides of the border and was told it was okay to take his shotgun into Mexico. That doesn’t make sense to me because there are warning signs posted at the border about what is not allowed. There is no way the US officials said it was okay. The posted story says he was arrested while trying to register his gun in Mexico. That makes more sense. His mistake was in not getting the permit before crossing with the gun. I’ve hunted whitewing in Mexico and it takes a lot of time and effort to get permits to cross with shotguns. It’s not something that can be done at the last moment.

It seems to be an innocent mistake on his part. I hope he gets out of that hell hole soon.

I don’t recall having to do anything on the US side to take a shotgun into Mexico. It was all done on the Mexico side. Even if permits were done on the US side, it still has to be done on the Mexico side BEFORE crossing the shotgun into Mexico. It is illegal to even take a shotgun shell into Mexico without a permit.

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